In the Telegraph, Jeremy Warner pokes a bit of fun at the EU’s self-inflicted media pratfalls over the Cypriot banking “bailout”:
For the last time, I never used the word “template”. Thus said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup, at his IMF press conference on Saturday. This is about whether the troika’s disastrous mishandling of the Cypriot bailout should be used as a model for future banking insolvencies in the eurozone. The row shows no sign of abating. OK, so Mr Dijsselbloem never did use the word “template” in originally welcoming the Cypriot defenestration, but that’s what he meant, forcing him quickly to backtrack when it was pointed out to him that his remarks might prompt a run on banks elsewhere in the eurozone.
But hold on a moment. Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, said on Friday that Cyprus did provide a model in terms of bailing in depositors, so who’s right? Well it is sort of a model, Mr Dijsselbloem said at his IMF press conference, in the sense that common principles would in future be applied to banking resolution, but each case would no doubt be different and have its own defining characteristics. All clear now?
